Borderlands Legends Preview

Borderlands blasts its way on over to the iPhone and iPad

Prepare yourselves for another round of locking, loading, and looting with Borderlands Legends, a mobile extension of the highly popular Borderlands series. Don’t let its platform fool you, though: developer Gearbox intends to pack in all the strategy, mayhem and cel-shaded glory of its console counterparts.

Using an isometric perspective that’s new to the series, players will encounter the familiar rogues gallery of Skags, Bandits, Crimson Lance, Spider Ants and more. But the days of being a one man army are over. This time, players are in control of the bandit-busting protagonists Brick, Lilith, Mordecai, and Roland simultaneously, and can even combine their murderous rage into waste laying combination attacks. A vast arsenal of guns and gear are scattered throughout the game, of course, and players can purchase even more spectacular firepower from Marcus, the in-game arms dealer.

Players now have a lifesaving cover system at their disposal that, when combined with the overhead perspective and touch-based interface, gives the traditional run-and-gun gameplay an additional dose of battlefield strategy. And speaking of strategy, the skill trees of the previous two titles are still in place. Each character has three action skills and six abilities, and those six abilities can be upgraded up to five times. These new advantages don’t mean the game is going to be a cakewalk, however. The difficulty level of your blood thirsty foes scales at a rate proportional to your own, and the vicious objective-based encounters are completely randomized, ensuring a worthy challenge whether you’re green to the scene or a battle hardened veteran.